With more BPM (that’s Blips Per Minute) than your last Galaga marathon, the 8-Bit Jesus Christmas album by Doctor Octoroc is sure to nerdify your holiday, for free!
Songs like Super Jingle Bros., Ryu the Red Nosed Ninja and The Legend of Noel combine old school NES nostalgia with good ol’ fashioned holiday nostalgia. Toss in an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two Hundred Shot Range Model Air Rifle and you’re good to go.
Sounds Familyre, home of everyone’s favorite melodramatic popular song folk minstrels Danielson Familie, has a free Christmas compilation out for your holiday enjoyment.
Of note, Sufjan Stevens returning from the future, bringing back a rendition of Good King Wenceslas unlike any you’ve heard before (unless, of course, you are a robot).
My favorite title from the vast Sufjan Christmas catalogue has to be Did I Make You Cry On Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!).
Head over to 4AD for some great free tracks from Deerhunter, Bon Iver and Department of Eagles.
There, you can see the news about the latest Red Hot + compilation, curated by The National. Dark was the Night is set for release on February 17, 2009 here in the States. This will be the 20th Red Hot + release, each dedicated to raising awareness about AIDS and to raising funds for continuing research.
Here’s an alphabetical list of featured performers on Dark was the Night:
I’m so stoked for The Idea Camp, which will be from February 27-28, 2009 in Irvine, California! Charles Lee has been a catalyst for bringing together this unconference. From their site:
The Idea Camp is a FREE, open source hybrid conference designed to help people move from the realm of ideas to implementation.
We are gathering some of the most innovative and creative leaders from around the country (this means YOU!) to share ideas, intentionally network, and move collaboratively into idea-making. Whether your passion is church leadership, non-profit work, social entrepreneurialism, technology, media, creativity, culture making, church planting, spiritual formation, compassionate justice, etc., this is the conference for YOU.
The focus of this conference will be on the participants (yes, You!) and not on keynote speakers. We function under the belief that the crowd is always smarter and wiser than any one speaker. In fact, you are invited to create and refine some of the major components of the conference prior to the gathering itself via our web interface. You are welcome to suggest specific topics for our workshops (called Idea Sessions), leave comments, ask questions, share case scenarios for discussion, and even volunteer yourself to facilitate one of our Idea Sessions.
We desire the Idea Camp to be a conference for friends by friends.
In keeping with the trend of confessions around here, I didn’t really know what an unconference was until reading DJ Chuang’s helpful notes explaining the unconference concept (thanks, DJ!).
In related news, support Charles’ idea for how the Obama administration should change America at change.org! Charles has put forth the idea of a national campaign to build more shelters for the victims of human trafficking:
In light of the recent growth of awareness and practice of reporting human trafficking suspicion around the country (which has resulted in more rescues and arrests), I would like to see our government help fund a national media campaign to build more trafficking shelters around the United States. In addition, our government could also award some of our private, recognized service providers with funding for building and operating shelters for trafficking victims.
… of missing out on free Dr. Pepper, that is.
If you weren’t able to register for your Guns N’ Roses-inspired free Dr. Pepper yesterday — or weren’t able to wait out their overloaded, laggy website — here are some free tracks (of actual good music that didn’t take, like, decades to release!) to ease your 23 flavors-less pain.
The good people of Dischord Records are offering the classic melodic hardcore Egg Hunt 7″ tracks as free digital downloads to everyone who registers for an account there. Yet another reason to support great independent music!
In other 80s news, Stereogum has a couple of clever covers for your downloading happiness, including The Welcome Wagon‘s version of Half a Person by the Smiths and Takka Takka’s take on the Phil Collins epic In the Air Tonight. Did I mention that I went to seminary with Vito Aiuto of The Welcome Wagon?
Also, you can download an Obama-inspired track by none other than the Boss himself (and you don’t even have to make up a fake email address to give to Sony).
You might want to wait before picking up your New Order reissues, though.
headsparks* 